My Mom’s Low-Cal Meals Killed Me In My Past Life Chapter 08

My Mom’s Low-Cal Meals Killed Me In My Past Life Chapter 08

The neighbors were furious, urging me not to protect Mom and Serena anymore.

Mom collapsed on the floor, crying and begging me.

“Lainey, I made one terrible mistake. All of this was my fault. It had nothing to do with Serena. If

you want to blame someone, blame me.”

Serena leaned against her shoulder, shaking her head with performative, theatrical grief.

What a touching mother-daughter scene.

I walked into Mom’s bedroom, opened the closet, and found the home safe tucked in the corner.

Then I entered Serena’s birthday.

With a soft click, the safe opened.

From the deepest part of it, I found a set of adoption papers.

I walked back into the living room and threw them onto the coffee table.

“Denise Hale, I was never your biological daughter, was I?”

Denise’s pupils shrank sharply.

She had thought I would spare her out of whatever mother-daughter bond she believed we had left.

But that was impossible now.

The neighbors looked at the adoption papers on the table, and realization dawned across every face.

“So Lainey isn’t your biological child. No wonder you treated her like this.”

“Denise, you’re not human.”

“You already had your own daughter, but you still adopted Lainey. Did you plan from the beginning

to use her as raw material for Serena’s medication?”

All the color drained from Denise’s face.

The neighbors were right.

Denise had adopted me with a purpose.

Years ago, after Denise’s husband died from obesity-related complications, her daughter Serena

was also found to carry the same gene.

Denise did not want her daughter to die from that illness, so she asked around everywhere.

Eventually, she learned that in several isolated Appalachian mountain communities, there was a family who carried a rare fat-metabolism gene.

As long as fat cells were harvested from people with that gene and processed into related derivative drugs, her daughter’s weight could be stabilized.

But that method required a massive number of fat cells.

That meant the person being harvested had to be injected again and again with large doses of nutrient-based growth compounds, forcing the body to produce huge amounts of fat cells in a short time, stretching their tissues to a painful, unnatural limit.

The method would also severely weaken the person’s immune system

It could even kill them.

But Denise chose it anyway.

After hearing my explanation, the neighbors looked shocked, furious, and sickened all at once.

“Lainey, are you the girl from that community?”

Inodded. “Yes.”

“Lainey, then you were never the one with the obesity gene. Those drugs were what made you gain

weight?”

“Yes.”

Denise’s eyes had completely collapsed.

Then she laughed like a woman losing her mind, a shrill, unhinged sound.

“Elaina, I fed you for years. I clothed you. So what if I took a few cells from your body? You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Even if the police come, they won’t be able to do anything to me.”

I opened the adoption papers and stared at them for a long time.

Eighteen years ago, Denise adopted me.

I had only been three.

But in my memory, I had parents.

I remembered one hot summer day when a strange woman came to our home with a little girl about

my age.

That woman ate a meal at our house and asked me many questions.

Later, my parents went into town.

They never came back.

The older people in my family said they died in a car accident.

I was sent into the county foster care system. Not long after that, I was adopted.

I walked up to Denise and locked my eyes on hers.

“I’m asking you. How did my parents really die?”

Her pupils shrank violently, and she turned her face away, terror bleeding through her expression.

“I… I don’t know.”